Student-Athlete Of The Month: Verity Fogarty

If something’s happened at Annapolis Area Christian School (AACS) in the last four years, odds are Verity Fogarty played some part in it.

Fogarty, who graduated May 17, was involved in virtually everything possible during her time at AACS. She was a varsity athlete in three sports — cross country, swimming, and track and field — all four years of high school. She also participated in color guard for two years, tutored students in American Sign Language (ASL), and took multiple dual-enrollment classes through Liberty University. Fogarty excelled in all of it, while accumulating an unweighted 3.9 GPA.

“I’m not the best time manager, but somehow I did it,” Fogarty said. “I think I did well because I could immediately go after school to practice, and then immediately go home, eat, and then go upstairs and work. It was repetitive, but luckily the work wasn’t too overbearing, and I could get it done.”

Of all the things she did, Fogarty loved cross country the most.

It was in that discipline that she helped AACS to the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland (IAAM) C Conference championship last fall, finishing sixth in the championship race despite battling illness. She didn’t tell anyone until afterward, for fear of upsetting the team’s momentum toward a championship.

“We were doing so well all season, and all of our top five runners were placing very high. I knew that we could win, but I knew that if I didn’t run that we might not win,” Fogarty said. “I didn’t tell my coaches because I didn’t want to sit out – I wanted to make sure we would win.”

Her choice proved decisive: AACS won with 27 points to St. Timothy’s 43. Had she not raced and the standings remained the same, St. Timothy’s would have won by one point.

It was the program’s tight-knitted nature that drew Fogarty in and kept her there all four years.

“I had an amazing team and they made the whole experience even better. We also had amazing coaches that made our experience as athletes and a team really tight-knit and close,” she said, praising one coach for arranging Chick-fil-A runs on Saturday mornings, and another for channeling her physical therapy, recovery, and nutritional expertise to the athletes’ benefit.

Fogarty took that second lesson and extended her studies to benefit other people, something she hopes to continue at Liberty. She chose American Sign Language as her language component at AACS, and she turned to tutoring younger students in the assignment during the school’s Engage period – similar to study/lunch blocks at Anne Arundel County Public Schools.

It's a class that captured her heart, and one she plans to study at Liberty to become an interpreter.

“I thought ASL was really fun. At the same time, ASL is a bit different from other languages because you have to get down to the meaning with ASL,” Fogarty said. “It’s more specific than English, which is helpful for me because I have ADHD, and I have trouble telling people how I feel and being able to use ASL to do that has been really awesome. I feel heard.”